New Playground Coming To Rocket Park

The City of McMinnville has approved plans for a new playground at Rocket Park after receiving the Community Champions Playground grant.

McMinnville Parks and Rec Director Justin Scott said the playground is part of a master plan the city developed two years ago. Scott said it will go along with the other improvements that have already been announced for the park.

“It’s pretty robust,” Scott said. “It’s got some neat features on it and it’s going to kind of be the center point of that play area down there now that is really outdated and it will come with some swings and we are looking to purchase an adaptive swing that will go with that. We are super excited about it.”

The playground will also contain multiple slides and a climbing apparatus. Scott said the playground will be part of phase one of improvements at the park and he expects the playground to be completed sometime this upcoming spring.

“Hopefully it will be shipped here soon,” Scott said. “We are going to store it at one of our water treatment plant locations which is right next to Rocket Park. We hope that as we get it in we are going to be able to take it down and start piecing it together. It’s a large structure and it is going to take some time.”

Scott said the city is currently looking for funding to pave a parking lot at the park as part of phase one.

“We are continuing to look at applying for other grants to pave down there to create a paved parking lot,” Scott said. “It’s gravel currently, but we are wanting to do a paved parking lot.”

Scott said the city hopes to complete the master plan by the end of 2027. Scott said currently the city does not have enough funding for all improvements at the park and the plan is to obtain grants and make improvements one project at a time.

The grant is a sum of $44,500 from a playground distributor called Gametime.